The Gwen John Sculpture

A Tim Simpson mystery is a glimpse into the rarefiedand sometimes dangerousworld of international art collecting. In his third adventure, Simpson, an art investment consultant to a British bank, receives a letter from Mme. Boiteau, an elderly, impoverished Frenchwoman, asking him to authenticate and perhaps purchase a work by Rodin that is in her possession. When he arrives at her home in the suburbs of Paris, however, he catches two hoodlums in the act of ranksacking the house and attacking Mme. Boiteau and her young niece, Jacky. Simpson quickly foils the thugs, but Mme. Boiteau dies as a result of her injuries. This leaves a question as to whether or not the Rodin work really existed, and Simpson's relentless pursuit of the truth begins to make a lot of people uncomfortableand violent. The narrative is burdened with unnecessarily detailed descriptions of the international finance and art worlds, and readers may find rugged two-fisted fighter Simpson also priggish, smug and unsympathetic. But Malcolm writes with confidence and his mise-en-scene has snob appeal. (April)